Peter Redgrove

His Idea of Glory

Huge white clouds blown up into the sky by gathering thunder.Flames breaking out of the yellowish coils of smoke of the bonfire lit in the forest clearing by the well.The undertaker walking uphill with blue crepe tied around his top hat—“His idea of glory,” somebody remarks.I have put on my father’s old Home Guard uniform and am standing in bright dawn light and I welcome the rain with a curtsey and with “Good morning, my lady.”“One would have thought the deep to be frosted and hoary, yet from the cliff the sea does indeed boil like a pot,” somebody quotes.The well is still visible as a marshy pool by the ruins of the cottage.She lived solely for forty years on the milk of a single cow.Cornwall has the elixir of youth and the elixir of age, and delivers both equally.